What is it like to travel to Berlin today, particularly as a Jew,
and bring with you the baggage of history? And what happens when an
American Jew, raised by a secular family, falls in love with Berlin
not in spite of his being a Jew but because of it? The answer is
Berlin for Jews. Part history and part travel companion, Leonard
Barkan's personal love letter to the city shows how its long Jewish
heritage, despite the atrocities of the Nazi era, has left an
inspiring imprint on the vibrant metropolis of today. Barkan,
voraciously curious and witty, offers a self-deprecating guide to
the history of Jewish life in Berlin, revealing how, beginning in
the early nineteenth century, Jews became prominent in the arts,
the sciences, and the city's public life. With him, we tour the
ivy-covered confines of the Sch nhauser Allee cemetery, where many
distinguished Jewish Berliners have been buried, and we stroll
through Bayerisches Viertel, an elegant neighborhood created by a
Jewish developer and that came to be called Berlin's "Jewish
Switzerland." We travel back to the early nineteenth century to the
salon of Rahel Varnhagen, a Jewish society doyenne, who frequently
hosted famous artists, writers, politicians, and the occasional
royal. Barkan also introduces us to James Simon, a
turn-of-the-century philanthropist and art collector, and we
explore the life of Walter Benjamin, who wrote a memoir of his
childhood in Berlin as a member of the assimilated Jewish
upper-middle class. Throughout, Barkan muses about his own
Jewishness, while celebrating the rich Jewish culture on view in
today's Berlin. A winning, idiosyncratic travel companion, Berlin
for Jews offers a way to engage with German history, to acknowledge
the unspeakable while extolling the indelible influence of Jewish
culture.
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